David
“I was always a good reader,” David told us, as we had lunch this summer.
“I struggled with all the other subjects when I was little, but I was a good reader because I had a lot of practice. I lived in foster homes almost my whole life, and I learned to just stay
out of the way. I knew that staying out of the way meant that I usually didn’t get in trouble. If I made noise have any kind, it was usually pretty bad for me.”
David’s the kind of person you feel a fondness for almost immediately after meeting him. He’s kind and genuinely interested in what others have to say. He has walked with Emmaus for several years, and he is always a great encourager. He admits he’s a very different person now than he was when he first connected with Emmaus.
“I was very angry. I was mad at the world, I was mad at myself, I was mad at my situation, and I was mad at God. I kept thinking to myself, ‘I don’t deserve this.'”
David opened up to tell us how his years in “the life” began.
“My foster brother abused and trafficked me starting at 12 years old,” David told us.
“He would rape me and sell me to men all over the neighborhood. I hated every moment, and I ran away when I was 15. When I got to Chicago, I didn’t have anywhere to stay, and I had no way to support myself. So, I started prostituting myself to survive.”
He looks back on those years with sadness, confident that it did not have to be that way.
“I don’t know how my (foster care) caseworker missed all the signs. Right before I ran away, I told her I was being trafficked and about all the things that were being done to me. I could tell she didn’t believe me – nobody ever did.” He said, “Things like that don’t happen to boys.”
David shared that he spent nearly a decade on the streets in a cycle of shame, addiction, exploitation, and incarceration.
“I’d seen people from Emmaus on the streets for years. They were always pretty nice to me, but I wasn’t buying what they were selling. One day, after a very hard night, I just needed a place to shower and wash my clothes. ”
“You know,” he said, tearing up a little bit, “you welcomed me home like the prodigal son.”
David became actively involved with Emmaus from that point on. He said he had stopped hustling within days and was trying to find an honest way to make a living. He attended Bible studies at the drop-in center and eagerly plugged into a local church.
“I still don’t completely know why God took me through those hard times in life, but I know that I can help other people who are still there.”
Throughout 2020 we have been connecting with many Emmaus clients, some still struggling to leave “the life” others are thriving. For David, 2020 has been perhaps one of the best years of his life.
He worked in the gig economy, trying to string several sources of income together to survive. Now, through a connection at his church, he has full-time work. He had struggled with isolation and loneliness; now, he’s part of an active church community. And where he once struggled to keep a roof over his head, he now has a small apartment that he loves.
Please continue to pray for David as he partners with Emmaus to help create outreach programs that will reach boys and young men victimized by the sex trade. Boys that were just like him